What is Silo AI? The Finnish Powerhouse Behind AMD’s Latest $665M Acquisition

• Silo AI has been acquired by AMD and will become part of AMD’s AI group.
• AMD has invested $125 million across a dozen AI firms in the past year.
• The price of AMD stock jumped almost 5% of the day of the announcement.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has announced that it has acquired one of the largest private artificial intelligence (AI) labs in Europe for $665 million.

This latest acquisition will serve to enhance AMD’s AI chip capabilities, build out the firm’s AI capabilities and offerings, and boost its position in the market. Now with Silo AI under its wing, can it finally compete with industry rival Nvidia?

AMD Acquisition

As per a July 10 press release , AMD has finalized agreements to purchase Silo AI in an “all-cash transaction” worth approximately $665 million.

According to AMD, this marks a major step forward for the firm’s AI ambitions. Notably, it says the acquisition will help improve the development and deployment of its AMD-powered AI models and software capabilities.

What is Silo AI?

Founded in Helsinki in September 2017, Silo AI is the biggest private AI firm known for its commitment to creating open-source AI models and democratizing Large Language Models (LLMs).

The chip manufacturing giant notes that Silo has “extensive” experience in developing bespoke AI models, platforms, and solutions for major enterprises. This includes “cloud, embedded. and endpoint” markets.

Silo AI has collaborated with the likes of T-Mobile, Allianz, Intel, Finnair, and even Nvidia. Silo will now become part of AMD’s Artificial Intelligence Group.

In the press release,  Dr. Pekka Mannien, Director of Science and Technology at CSC-IT Center for Science, Finland, said that:

“Silo AI has been a pioneer in scaling large language model training on LUMI, Europe’s fastest supercomputer powered by over 12,000 AMD Instinct MI250X GPUs,”

The AI firm has worked with university collaborators and created state-of-the-art open-source models for EU languages. AMD views Silo as the link between its “foundational” AI software, and real-world applications.

The Silo AI purchase comes as part of a broader AMD AI strategy which has seen the firm invest $125 million across a dozen AI firms in the last 12 months. This includes the acquisition of American AI firm Nod.ai, and French AI startup Mipsology .

AMD AI Investments

In 2022, AMD made a historic $49 billion purchase of American semiconductor company, Xilinx. The purchase bagged AMD not only the inventors of the first, and market-leading, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), but also a wealth of hardware intellectual property, and an incredibly capable team of hardware architects

This and other strategic investments greatly expanded AMD products and services and placed them in the perfect position for the AI market boom that would kick off in late 2022, giving the firm a much-needed boost in terms of stock value.

Despite this significant growth, it still has some way to go before it reaches levels similar to Nvidia. At present, AMD commands a market cap of $297 billion, whilst Nvidia is presently the third most valuable company in the world with a market cap of $3.3 trillion.

The gap between AMD and Nvidia became considerably large following Nvidia‘s wildly successful stock performance as it further captured huge portions of the AI market. However, it seems that AMD does have a plan in mind, considering its rather aggressive AI investment strategy.